Posts Tagged With: seven trumpets

With today’s reading we are solidly in the section of Revelation that is both hard to understand in a simple reading and that reveals aspects of God that we neither think a lot about nor welcome.

After running quickly through the first four trumpets, John concentrates his attention on the fifth and sixth. As the revelation unfolds we see an army of lion-toothed locusts armed like scorpions come up out of the underworld to invade the world bringing torment as they go. With the sixth trumpet this only intensifies as a numberless horde of long-haired barbarians wreaks havoc on the countryside (bear in mind that the barbarians of northern Europe did in fact bring the end to the Roman Empire in the 400s AD). More than torment, this army of riders brings death to a wide swath of people. As a great fan of Tolkien, I can’t help but imagine an army of demented and distorted orcs marching across the land. Notice the faithful who have been marked on their foreheads by God as His are protected entirely from the effects of the trumpets (9:4). John now has God unleashing evil forces to punish the wicked. Maybe we are uncomfortable with this idea of God using evil, but here it is.

Maybe the most amazing point in this chapter is that even after all of this torment, even after a third of the world dies, the people being punished were so bent towards evil that they did not turn from their sinful ways:

All the other people, the ones who had not been killed in these plagues, did not repent of the things they had made. The did not stop worshipping demons — idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see, hear, or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, or their magic, or their fornication, or their stealing. (9:20-21)

Sadly, I have to believe that there are people alive today who are every bit as depraved as these.

My son has one of your typical microscopes that has three lenses that rotate, through which you can view a slide with gradual degrees of magnification. At first you can look through the 10x lens and see a small insect or piece of a plant or a seed in its entirety. Then you can switch to the 40x lens and finer features begin to reveal themselves, until with the 100x lens you see the finest of details you did not know even existed. You are always looking at the same thing, but your ability to see the details grows as the lenses change.

Today we come to the second set of seven objects that deliver judgment on the world. First it was seven seals. Now it is seven trumpets, an object used universally in the ancient world to announce battle. In a few more chapters we will come to seven bowls from which God’s wrath is poured. Thinking as good westerners for whom all time is linear, we naturally think these three sets of seven are occurring chronologically one after another. That is twenty-one doses of some bad medicine!

Robert Mounce, a respected commentator on Revelation, argues that it is better to think that these three sets discuss the same events just with more and more detail as we move through the sets, as happens with my son’s microscope. The seven seals largely described the woes of the world as socially-occurring events brought on my human selfishness: war, violence, maybe even famine and disease. Now as the details of the matter come into focus with the trumpets we see that there is a divine hand involved in the judgment. This way of thinks of the seals, trumpets and bowls is worth considering as we read.

I also want to point out why God is unleashing divine judgment. Much like the events of fifth seal in which we were allowed to see the faithful but persecuted Christians crying out for justice, the prayers of the righteous have come up to God in His glorious throne-room like incense and he is aware.

Another angel came and stood before the altar. He was holding a golden censer, and he was given a large quantity of incense so that he could offer it, along with the prayers of all God’s holy people, on the golden altar, in front of the throne. The smoke of incense, with the prayer of the saints, rose up from the hand of the angel in front of God. (8:3-4)

The prayers of people precious to God are powerful. God sees their plight. He hears their prayers. He smells the desperate aroma of their lament. God does not stand by aloof.